Waning
by Blaze6
Summary: The first thing he heard was goodbye. G/S


Title: Waning  
  
Author: Blaze  
  
Category: SRA, G/S  
  
Rating/Spoilers: PG, and one teeny spoiler for Hunger Artist.  
  
Summary: 'The first thing he heard was goodbye.'  
  
Author's Notes: No one's read this, so if it sucks, oops. First posted piece of work. Constructive criticism always welcome, but I already know it's confusing. It's supposed to be like that. Enjoy!  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine, never have been and never will be, so please don't sue me. Hey, that rhymes!  
  
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The silence was waning.  
  
Slowly but surely, it was slipping away, eight months of hard-earned quiet and adjustment fading to his former state of normal.  
  
He hadn't noticed.  
  
Thing is, with a life change such as his, you adapt. He'd gotten used to never hearing another voice, not even hers. He had gotten used to not hearing the white noise of traffic and casinos, airplanes and sirens, a suspect's lies. He had gotten used to not missing what he thought he would miss.  
  
Like her voice telling him "I love you."  
  
It helped that he had never heard those particular words coming from her mouth, not once. He knew the way they looked on her hands, the way she took the signs and made them her own, but she had never spoken them. He couldn't decide if it was better this way.  
  
The silence was waning.  
  
He hadn't noticed.  
  
She had never whispered anything into his ear, knowing it was futile, even in the very beginning when it was the noise that was waning. But she kissed him and loved him and put up with him. Rode rollercoasters with him, learned to cook with him, wrote him long descriptions of cases and begged for his advice. She had done everything she thought he needed when his job slipped out from under him and forced him to move in. She covered for him in restaurants, willing to look like a controlling bitch as she ordered for him.  
  
She laughed even though he couldn't hear it, because it was the sight more than the sound that made him happy, cried when he bought her flowers, glared at him and sent him a flurry of angry signs when he pissed her off.  
  
The silence was waning, and he hadn't noticed.  
  
Oh, no, he hadn't noticed. Not the re-emerging sounds, not the ebbing silence, not the low grumble of a refrigerated truck. He hadn't noticed because the doctor had told him long ago that he wouldn't hear again without surgery or hearing aids, which he didn't have. He hadn't noticed because he thought the sounds were memories resurfacing.  
  
The silence was waning and he had noticed the other things.  
  
Her refusal to keep flowers. She stopped asking for his advice. She hardly ever cooked anymore. She was pulling doubles almost every shift, and he was suspicious, but Nick and Warrick and Catherine all swore that Sara was working, so he dropped it.  
  
He should have known when she stopped signing. He should have known when she started sleeping on the couch, ducking away from him, when she stopped smiling.  
  
Just a phase, he thought. Something's going on with her, but it'll be over.  
  
The silence was waning.  
  
The first thing he heard was "Goodbye."  
  
The first thing he saw was her face, anxious and distressed.  
  
The second thing he heard was, "I can't be with you right now." She hadn't signed it, knowing somehow, the way she always knew, that he could hear it perfectly clearly.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
The silence was waning and the noise was waning but that stayed perfectly clear, hovering in the balance between total silence and total sound. It circulated with every beat of his heart, along with a few thousand hours of memories.  
  
He had delusions of freedom, but her face and her voice and those words kept recycling, passing through his thoughts seventy times a minute, more when he was upset, so he remained trapped.  
  
It didn't help that he had a dozen pictures of her spread on her coffee table as he waited for a key to turn in the lock and for her to enter. But so far she hadn't, and he wondered when he should put the memories away.  
  
The silence was waning. He hadn't noticed, too absorbed in her leaving to really realize he had heard her say goodbye.  
  
He hadn't missed the noises, he hadn't missed hearing her voice, he missed loving her, and he wished he could miss missing her.  
  
The silence was waning, but the pain was not. 


End file.
